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Created Feb 07, 2013 06:36AM PST • Edited Jul 02, 2018 05:29PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   OK 2.5

   François Truffaut’s The Man Who Loved Women hasn’t aged well. Perhaps that happens to every Lothario. It certainly seems to happen to movies about them. Nonetheless, this famous French film carries a certain fascination given that it was created by the legendary auteur behind the Auteur Theory.

   If only it was a good movie. It’s not bad, just somewhat tedious, with obvious “insights” and very little joy.

4. Acting

   Good 3.0

   Charles Denner plays the driven womanizer of the title with a certain grim determination. He may love women, but he certainly doesn’t evince any joy from the chase, the seductions or anything else in his life.

   The women run together, even more so to a non-French viewer some 35 years after the movie was made.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

8. Male Costars Barely OK 2.0

10. Film

    OK 2.5

    Truffaut’s film is studded with pearls of punchy writing, as when a previously resistant girl tells her seducer to give her “a real kiss” or when his leading man says that “to write is to expose yourself to criticism.” This last is especially self-referential, given that Truffaut was a film critic before becoming a writer-director. And not just any critic, but the cocreator of the theory that posited filmmakers as the authors their films.

11. Direction Good 3.0

12. Play Good 3.0

13. Music OK 2.5

14. Visuals Barely OK 2.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.8

    Barely R-rated by modern standards. Cover up the occasional bare breast and it’s PG-13.

17. Sex Erotic 2.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.3

19. Rudeness Salty 1.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.3

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.5

23. Biological Glib 1.3

24. Physical Natural 1.0